The Devil Went Down to Austin (Tres Navarre #3)(104)

"I parent them," she said coldly. "These children need a real parent. They get nothing at home, if they have a home. They need what I give them. They needed what my husband gave them."

"Pain. Fear. Hate."

"They get what they need."

The curtains ballooned in with a limp breeze. In the den, Star Wars lasers blasted away.

"The last thing Dwight told me," I said. "He said he'd left the most important thing undone. He loved and feared you as much as he hated you, Mrs. Hayes, and so he could only kill your reflection. The others died in your place."

Mrs. Hayes put her hand on her knee, scraped her fingernails against the black cotton of her sweat pants. "My son is dead. He was my son. I've told the police everything."

"And the others who have died?"

"It was God's will."

"No, Mrs. Hayes. No, no, no."

The front door opened. Maia Lee came in, walking stiffly from the orthopaedic hardshoe she now wore on her left foot. She was followed by two uniformed APD

officers, then a businesssuited woman named Reyes from Child Protective Services.

"Dwight's last request," I told Mrs. Hayes. "To shut you down. It's amazing how helpful CPS can be when you bring them documentation on an unlicensed day care, run by a woman who raised a psychopath."

In the next room, Reyes started talking with the children, explaining that she was here to help. Maia Lee came up next to me. One of the officers stood impassively by the door while the other came into the living room and dropped a search warrant on Mrs.

Hayes' King James Bible, then a ceaseanddesist order from the State Attorney's office.

"They'll want a statement, Mrs. Hayes," Maia said, her voice cold. "Mrs. Reyes will want these officers to escort you to her office."

Mrs. Hayes looked at Maia, then the officer, then me.

She gave me a meagre smile. "You're so sure of yourself, aren't you? You think you know what is right."

In the next room, Reyes was talking to the children—recording their names and ages, where they lived.

"It's over, Mrs. Hayes," I said. "You won't raise any more children."

"Ask the police, Tres. They're so intent on paperwork, bending the facts to fit, ask them to check his blood."

"Dwight's body hasn't been found, Mrs. Hayes."

"Yes," she agreed easily. "But that's not what I meant. And you don't understand that simple fact."

Then she rose and let the deputy lead her out. On the couch where she'd been sitting, the dent of her form was embedded in the cushions as deep as footvalleys on cathedral steps.

Maia put her hand on my shoulder. "She's just trying to hurt you. Trying to shake you up."

I listened to the voices of the children in the other room. Two weeks—Every night—She's mostly nice—Only sometimes she gets mad— Bible readings—And one time I stole something—She calls me son.

"They'll be all right," Maia told me. "Reyes knows her work."

She started toward the door, but I couldn't move.

Dim light filtered through the windows of Mrs. Hayes' living room, but I felt I might as well have been back in Ruby McBride's pecan orchard, one hundred feet underwater?

or at Jimmy Doebler's waterfront? or even at the train crossing near my father's house in Olmos Park. I realized, as Dwight must have realized, that the cold dark weight of those places was no different, no less horrible. It would be easy to lose one's strength to ascend. And then the will. And finally even the desire.

I stared at the shaggy green staircase that led to the second floor. Then, half in a trance, I walked upstairs.

"Tres?" Maia called.

I looked in the doorway of Dwight Hayes' room. His car magazines and books had been scattered on the floor, the football posters taken down, the boysized mattress overturned.

In the bathroom opposite the stairs, I flipped the light switch and saw only myself in the medicine cabinet mirror. I looked at the bathtub—a small porcelain model, nothing special. Chrome fixtures, a permanent grime ring, faded 1970s flower decals on the bottom. The drain was wet.

The walls of the bathroom were avocado tile from waist down, yamcoloured wallpaper from the waist up. I imagined how high a small boy could reach, ran my hand along the wall. I hit the soft spot just in the middle of the right wall—an area no bigger than a doorknob, where the wallpaper felt like membrane.

I punched through, ripped away the edges. There was a layer of lightercoloured wallpaper underneath, and a dark void eaten into the wall behind.

I stared at it for a long time, until Maia came up behind me.

"What?" she asked.

I said, "A hole somebody never filled in."

CHAPTER 42

The rains had been good for Faye DoeblerIngram's front garden. Patches of wild rosemary had shot up to four feet. The bees were going nuts around her red and white hibiscus. Whitebrush was blooming, permeating the air with a scent like Christmas trees.

Maia Lee picked a blackeyed Susan. I got the morning paper off the porch, shook the dew off the plastic sleeve.

For an abandoned house, Faye's place looked pretty lively. An old yellow Honda and a brown sedan were parked in the driveway. Light shone through the living room window, flickering from the blades of a ceiling fan. The screen door was latched, but I could smell coffee inside, baking cinnamon bread. The stereo was playing an acoustic instrumental.